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Noooo, the All-Star team is a popularity contest so if Jeremy stays healthy he will make the All-Star team so every person of Asian decent(PC enough???) with a TV in the civilized world will tune in. David Stern is a marketing wizard and is not stupid. But if Jeremy leads the Rockets to the playoffs, I will more and gladly leave KO.COM. I know that would make you and Crazy'8 happy because neither of you respect opionions that differ from your own.

And I am harping on Jeremy for skipping the PLAYOFFS because he was needed. This is the KNICKS people. What is the iconic shot for our franchise??? Willis Reed coming out of the tunnel limping because of a broken leg to play for our squad in a championship series. Jeremy had a slight knee tweak. He should have been availible for the playoffs. If Lin was as serious about competition and KNICKS pride as he is about $$$$ he would have played in that series against MIAMI. It was the dreaded HEAT. National stage. His chance to prove in front of a national audience he was not a fluke. The chance to play against the best. Help lead our boys to victory. Shump went down and we needed Linsanity. WILD HORSES shouldn't have been able to keep LINSANITY off the court. But he choose to sit on the BENCH and wait for a contract. Then tried to hold the KNICKS hostage by signing to offer sheets with the Rockets. You know those guys we lost to in 94'. I have no more use for Jeremy Lin. Happy trails(like I tried to tell yall would happen)

Read that SI story, says his teammates told him not to play as well as Dolan who told him don't rush back because we have a long term investment in you. He was dying to play but took the advice of others.

This is the same buffon who gave ridiculous contracts to the likes of Eddy Curry. When did he become frugal?

Here is the difference as I see it. Dolan does need the Knicks to be a good team to make money.....The seats won't sell if they suck and the cable companies won't pay his MSG fee. With Curry, it was a move to try and get a big man in there to get a winning team. With Lin, the Knicks are already a decent team, and will be whether or not the offer is matched. So, since the Knicks are going to win games and be in the playoffs, the tickets will sell, and Lin is just an unnecessary cost.

Do you have anything substantial that would lead you to form that opinion?

Substantial: The un-called for comment concerning the contract. Since when do players comment on their -- potential -- team mates contracts? Dolan and Glen can say whatever they want. Players have to stay out of management issues. The same holds truth for JR Smith.

Originally Posted by VeryGundy

Why would Melo be against Lin? He was the one who gave him the starting job.

As for Dolan, he is a ****ing idiot. As long as he is the owner, NYK will not sniff rings.

Linsanity happened because all our possessions went through Lin as all other offensive options were out with injuries. The whole show was built on penetrate and pitch, essentially the binary opposite of Melo ball. Once Melo returned from his groin injury, Linsanity was over. Now imagine you were Melo, you can only lose with Lin on the team: Lin might have had enough swagger to deny him the ball on offense as is well aware of the fact that he has a notion of ho to win ball games. He put together an incredible streak surrounded by a bunch of scrubs and Chandler. Felton is not going to refuse the ball.

If you turn this around and the Knicks lose, people will not blame a 23 year old pointguard but the superstar and a shoot first think later egotistic (and I do not mean egoistic) pointguard. It's a lose-lose situation for Melo and for JR.

Think about MDA what you want, but Melo's performance after he left made it obvious that --at least some -- players, Melo included tanked to get rid of him. I said it back then and I will say it again: Every front office which sides with its players against a coach are doomed.

This is bull**** right here. These "reporters" write articles about the so called 4 year 28 million deal. Then, when it turns out this is not the actual deal that is to be delivered to Knicks managment, rather than admit that they got the story wrong, these guys say Lin double crossed management! Agents renegotiate deals all the time. And by the looks of it, Frank Isola, yahoo sports, and everyone else got played by the Lin camp. One great way to negotiate for a better deal is to leak the press on the original terms and demonstrate that it will be matched. Until it has been delivered to the Knicks to match, it is not official. The deal had never actually been delivered to NY. This is a BS controversy created by people who can't admit that they got played and want to pretend like they have some inside information. I'm so fed up with these "reports" and "insiders". These are the same people who make it seem like there was some Melo/Lin feud this past season, when we later found out that it was Melo who pushed for Lin in the NJ game. The article does a great job at the end to call Isola out for his BS.
The bottom line is Dolan didn't want to pay. Anything else is BS.

Preach we as fans should take a little more time to investigate opinions presented as facts instead of willingly feeding into what the the media force feeds us and taking it as gospel. IF IT DIDNT COME DIRECTLY FROM THAT PERSON MOUTH ITS PROABABLY NOT TRUE until proven otherwise

Here is the difference as I see it. Dolan does need the Knicks to be a good team to make money.....The seats won't sell if they suck and the cable companies won't pay his MSG fee. With Curry, it was a move to try and get a big man in there to get a winning team. With Lin, the Knicks are already a decent team, and will be whether or not the offer is matched. So, since the Knicks are going to win games and be in the playoffs, the tickets will sell, and Lin is just an unnecessary cost.

I am just playing devil's advocate here.

NYK is a media darling with Linsanity running the point. If you are Dolan, why would you want to give that up? With Lin on the court, NYK gets a lot more eyeballs with its cable package. If you are Dolan, why would you want a lower rating?

We both agree money is not the real issue here. So what gives? Did Lin date Dolan's gf? WTF.

NYK is a media darling with Linsanity running the point. If you are Dolan, why would you want to give that up? With Lin on the court, NYK gets a lot more eyeballs with its cable package. If you are Dolan, why would you want a lower rating?

We both agree money is not the real issue here. So what gives? Did Lin date Dolan's gf? WTF.

When Lin verbally commited to sign with the Rockets, back on july 4-5, the reported deal on the table was 4 years 28 million (19 guaranteed) with breakdowns of 5-5-9 and 9(last year not being guaranteed). Then it slowly comes out that the Knicks would match, easily, no problem, Woodson going as far as stating Lin's the starting PG. Morey, the MIT grad, not wanting to lose a sure revenue machine in Lin goes back to the drawing board. I'm sure the Rockets have lost a great deal of game day revenues when Yao retired. So given that the NBA allows you to sign deals July 11, Lin should have signed his offer that first day, DWill, Kidd, etc all verballed their intentions long before July 11. This board became impatient with the hold up, the hold up lasted until July 14-15. The Rockets re-did the original 4 year deal and funneled all the money into the 3rd year, knowing it would jack up the lux tax for the Knicks. Now was it all money or the notion that Lin signed a previously unreported deal? I would think it's a combination of both.

NYK is a media darling with Linsanity running the point. If you are Dolan, why would you want to give that up? With Lin on the court, NYK gets a lot more eyeballs with its cable package. If you are Dolan, why would you want a lower rating?

We both agree money is not the real issue here. So what gives? Did Lin date Dolan's gf? WTF.

ONE WORD EGO!

Dolan's ego and personal feelings got in the way nothing more nothing less

This decision was not made for basketball reason or financial reasons but EGO. The petchulant child picked his ball and went home at the expense of the fans

The Complete Truth of the Lin story and why he left

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

At 11 p.m. EST on Tuesday night, one hour before the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] needed to decide whether to match the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]' three-year, $25.1 million contract offer to keep [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], the point guard's cellphone rang at his parents' home in Palo Alto, Calif. The call was from New York general manager Glen Grunwald and the conversation lasted no more than 30 seconds. Grunwald's message, Lin told SI.com, was simple and direct: "We wanted to keep you, but it couldn't work out. Tell your family I say hello, and good luck the rest of the way."
That was it. One of the more intriguing and publicly debated personnel decisions in NBA history ended in half a minute. No questions were asked, no pointed comments were uttered and no animated feelings were expressed. Lin, the undrafted 23 year old who rose to global stardom in his first 25 starts after being cut twice, politely told Grunwald, "I just want to thank you. Best of luck in the future."
Late Tuesday night, in his inaugural hour as a Rocket, Lin opened up to SI.com about how the most popular basketball player in New York City ended up in Houston, where he'll have his official team physical on Wednesday. He spoke about how Knicks management -- which had spoken to him and his representatives only once this month before that call from Grunwald -- finally let him go.
"Honestly, I preferred New York," Lin said. "But my main goal in free agency was to go to a team that had plans for me and wanted me. I wanted to have fun playing basketball. ... Now I'm definitely relieved."
*****
The process began in late June, when Knicks coach Mike Woodson, who was in Los Angeles visiting [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] and [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], contacted Lin to arrange a meeting to discuss his future. When Woodson said that his schedule prevented him from coming to Palo Alto, Lin -- who has been living with his parents this summer -- wound up flying to L.A. That night, over dinner at Mastro's Steakhouse in Beverly Hills, the guard was sold. "Woodson was saying, 'You're going to be a starter, you're going to be a big part of the team,'" Lin said. "I came away really excited."[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
But the next week, on July 1, the first day of the NBA's free agency period, the Knicks informed Lin and his agents, Jim Tanner and Roger Montgomery, that while the team had interest in bringing Lin back, they were also going to court other point guards to join him. The names of four candidates were provided. Three of them were veteran free agents, all age 36 or older: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] and [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]. The fourth was former Knick [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], 28, who played for the [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] last season.
The Knicks would not make a formal offer to Lin -- not then, or, ultimately, ever -- instead opting to steer him toward the open market so he could assess his own price. Serious conversations with three teams other than the Knicks began. Only Houston, which had already cut the Harvard economics major last December, warranted a visit, on July 4. "The Rockets kept saying how sorry they were that that they'd cut him, and how much of a mistake it was," Tanner said. "They almost said it too many times. They kept acknowledging it."
Lin left Houston impressed by the effort and the enthusiasm. A backloaded first offer, as widely reported, came to him at four years -- with the fourth as a team option -- and $28.8 million. As news of the offer broke (and Lin's camp says they did not communicate anything to the Knicks before an offer sheet was actually signed), Woodson publicly declared that Lin would "absolutely" be back. But not long after that, the Rockets came back with a revised offer: three years for $25.1 million, with the money rising from $5 million in the first season, to $5.225 million in the second, to $14.898 million in the third. (The relatively low values of the first two annual salaries are as mandated by the Collective Bargaining Agreement's "[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]" provision.)
By this point, Lin had no real idea what the Knicks would do. But there also wasn't much choice: He had all of one offer sheet in front of him to consider.[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
While surfing the Internet last Sunday, Lin read that Felton was reportedly en route to the Knicks from Portland via a sign-and-trade. Earlier this month, New York had already signed Kidd; now, Lin saw the writing on the wall, along with everybody else. "Felton's signing was the first time when I thought, 'Oh, wow, I might not be a Knick,'" Lin said.
The next time he heard from an executive in the organization, it was to tell him the Knicks were letting him go.
*****
The last time Lin talked to Knicks owner James Dolan was right before Game 5 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, when New York was down, 3-1, to eventual NBA champion Miami. Lin, who had suffered a meniscus tear in his left knee, had been ruled out for the remainder of the regular season and had already missed the first four games of this playoff series. Now Dolan, with point guard [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] also injured, wondered about Lin's availability. But the matter had already been settled. "Every single vet on our team that has been in the league longer than five years pulled me aside and told me that I shouldn't play," Lin said. "And I had arguments with them about why I should."
Dolan -- who didn't talk to Lin often but had generally been "really nice to me" -- wound up expressing support. "I have plans for you in the future," Lin recalled the owner saying. "This is a long-term investment. Don't rush back."[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
At the time, Lin says, he had been sleepingwith an ice machine on every night and waking up early to restart it. He couldn't even touch the rim, much less defend. But the morning of Game 5, when asked about his status, he had publicly diagnosed himself at "85 percent" -- a comment he says has since been misunderstood. Lin was not 85 percent healthy, he says, but rather 15 percent away from the absolute minimum threshold to play. "People think it was easy for me to sit there and watch us lose, like I had nothing to do with the season," Lin said. "I was dying to play. I didn't miss a game due to injury in seven years until this past season, and people are acting like I wouldn't want to play in the playoffs? Of the NBA? In my first season?"
He is happy with his new employer, but less so about the misconceptions that others may now harbor. The notion that Lin has always cared about money above all else, in particular, eats away at him, especially as he sleeps in his childhood home.
"If I really wanted to, I could have triple-digit endorsements," Lin pointed out, but he does not. Instead, and in large part because Lin wanted to concentrate on basketball, he declined to cash in on the Linsanity gold-rush -- namely, the mountain of business opportunities in Asia -- and picked only three companies: Volvo, Steiner Sports and Nike.
"A year ago, I was just trying to stay alive and fight day by day, just to be on a roster," said Lin, who famously slept on couches upon his arrival in New York. "What I have now is way more than I ever would have dreamed of, and way more than I need."
What he doesn't have, though -- and what he deeply misses about those magical two months, back when he was atop the sports world -- is something that can't be bought, and likely can't be replicated elsewhere, again.
"I love the New York fans to death," Lin said. "That's the biggest reason why I wanted to return to New York. The way they embraced me, the way they supported us this past season, was better than anything I've ever seen or experienced. I'll go to my grave saying that. What New York did for me was unbelievable. I wanted to play in front of those fans for the rest of my career."

He had NO CHOICE. Only 1 offer sheet. Felton was just traded to the Knicks. What was he suppose to do?????

See the part about him WANTING TO play but Dolan told him NO...

"Dolan -- who didn't talk to Lin often but had generally been "really nice to me" -- wound up expressing support. "I have plans for you in the future," Lin recalled the owner saying. "This is a long-term investment. Don't rush back."

If you read that SI article which might be self serving towards Lin but it doesn't mention Lin's camp going back to the Rockets asking for a backloaded 3 year guaranteed deal instead of a 4 year one with the 4th a team option. The Rox amended the offer and presented it to Lin, I don't see how you can blame him for being underhanded about that. Who here is going to refuse more money for doing a job.

I doubt any of that underhanded stuff had anything to do with not matching, the new CBA worked as designed, keeping rich teams from signing whoever they want. I mean when I heard Lin would cost the Knicks 57M tax plus salary, I thought the kid was gone. Yeah the Knicks probably looked at it from all angles but Lin wouldn't affect ticket sales, the Garden is always sold out and I heard they only had one deal in place with an Asian company so they weren't going to recoup 57M from any side money.

Lin is in the right place for both teams, he gets to start with a lineup where he can be ball dominant, the Rox can afford him where the Knicks couldn't and he will make a ton of money for the Rox with Les Alexanders China connections.

Lin "I preferred the money" he had that first offer sheet and should of told them he will sign that and wont sign the new one they gave him. Its HIS CHOICE to sign the backloaded deal. HE KNEW the knicks couldnt match that. He wasnt forced to sign the deal. He knew "hey with this 14.5mil in the last year the knicks might not be able to keep me" he gambled and lost. Lin you became a rocket just like you wanted.